This invention relates to a ball throwing machine used for baseball practice, e.g., for practicing batting balls and catching batted balls.
A prior art of such ball throwing machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,437. In this disclosed arrangement, the ball throwing machine body has a pair of rotatable bodies which are adapted to be rotated in opposite directions and at different speeds relative to each other. Balls are successively nipped between these two rotatable bodies and thrown. In this case, a spin is imparted to the ball to a degree which depends on the difference between the rotative speeds of the rotatable bodies to produce different types of pitches, such as a shoot and a curve. Further, said ball throwing machine body is supported on a base through support means.
In this connection, in doing the aforesaid practice using a ball throwing machine, it is desired that the ball throwing direction can be changed to some extent and that the direction of spin of the ball can be arbitrarily selected so that the ball is thrown in a desired type of pitch. To this end, it has been proposed to construct the aforesaid support means in the ball joint type, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,774,585.
That is, in this construction, a ball body is mounted to project upwardly from a base. On the other hand, the ball throwing machine body is provided with a holder member for holding said ball body, said holder member being adapted to be turnable around the center of the ball body. Further, the holder member is so arranged that it is fixed to the ball body in its arbitrary angular position relative to the ball body. And, the turning of the holder member allows the ball throwing machine body to assume various postures.
The aforesaid arrangement, however, has the follwoing problem.
When it is desired to position the two rotatable bodies of the ball throwing machine vertically so as to impart a spin to the ball around its horizontal axis, this would result in the holder member coming in contact with the connecting portion between the base and the ball body. Thus, it is difficult to turn the ball throwing machine body so as to bring the two rotatable bodies in a vertical position. As a result, pitches are limited in type, so that for example, a pitch which rises just short of the batter, i.e., a hop cannot be obtained.